Binge Eating Archives - Page 36 of 39

Weight Gain from Binge Eating Recovery?

If you have bulimia or binge eating disorder, you’ve most likely experienced weight gain from binge eating. You may wonder what will happen as you recover…will you lose the weight you’ve gained? Will you gain more weight as you begin eating normally? What will your weight be as a binge-free and diet-free person?

It’s important for you to understand that recovery from binge eating is not about weight loss or avoiding any further weight gain. Overcoming binge eating is about letting go of a harmful, health-sabotaging behavior, rising above the shame and pain it brought, and moving on with your life. However, the reality is that weight concerns are very common in recovering binge eaters, so I want to give you some help in this area.

I’ve address weight thoroughly at BrainoverBinge.com/Weight, as well as in The Brain over Binge Recovery Guide. Today, I’m also going to talk about possibility of gaining weight during and after binge eating recovery, and how you can deal with this in a healthy way.

When I Stop Binge Eating, Does that Mean I’ll Stop Gaining Weight?

Usually, yes. It only makes sense that binge eating recovery commonly involves a cessation of weight gain and eventual weight loss as the out-of-control eating episodes decrease and go away. When you stop eating abnormally large amounts of food, your calorie intake goes down to a normal level, and it follows that body weight naturally goes down to the level that is normal for your unique body.

Eventual and gradual weight loss is even common in people who self-induce vomiting or use other forms of purging after binges, because a significant portion of the binge calories are still absorbed, and stopping the binge/purge cycle still leads to an overall decrease in calories. Even if there is some bloating when you first stop purging, the body can regulate, and any weight gained from bulimia can be slowly released. (For help stopping purging and dealing with bloating, read these Tips to Help You Stop Purging, and listen to Episode 54: Stop Purging in Binge Eating Recovery: Interview with Ali Kerr.

The fact that stopping binge eating reduces calories also holds true if you are dieting restrictively between binges. If you consider your overall calorie intake from restrictive dieting plus binge eating, you’ll realize that the total is likely more, and often much more, than the calorie total of a normal diet. For example, I recommend a daily minimum of 2,200 calories to help you recover from restriction and binge eating. Someone who is restricting and eating only 1,200 calories per day, but then having 6,000 calorie binges a few times a week, is actually averaging over 3,500 calories per day.

Like I said at the start, recovery is not about weight loss, but the simple fact that quitting will reduce calorie intake goes a long way to alleviate some weight-related fears of recovery You may have previously worried that giving up restriction and purging would make you gain weight; but when you also factor in that you’ll be stopping binge eating as well, you may feel reassured to know that your overall calorie intake will go down to a normal level. You may feel more willing to eat enough food on a daily basis, which is absolutely necessary, because recovery won’t happen if you keep yourself in a state of starvation.

If I Keep Restricting, Can I Speed Up Weight Loss in Binge Eating Recovery, or Avoid Weight Gain?

No. If you keep restricting, you will keep binge eating, and keep your calorie intake higher than if you just ate normally. Some people think that they can stop binge eating without stopping dieting and other dangerous weight-control behaviors like purging; but you simply cannot recover while your body is in underfed. This is why I teach that recovery comes down to two basic goals:

Recovery Goal 1: Dismiss urges to binge (stop giving urges attention and stop acting on them)
Recovery Goal 2: Eat Adequately (eat enough decent quality food)

It is impossible to accomplish Recovery Goal 1 on a consistent basis without implementing Recovery Goal 2.

If you’ve read this far and still find yourself having significant resistance to Recovery Goal 2 (Eating Adequately), this could be because you believe you believe you are an exception to what I’ve explained above about binge eating recovery usually leading to a cessation of weight gain and eventual weight loss.

What if I Think I Will Gain Weight from Binge Eating Recovery?

To understand how weight gain is possible from binge eating recovery, let’s shift gears for a moment and think about anorexia recovery. It is a given that weight gain is a part of the process of restoring the recovering anorexic back to health. Weight gain is necessary and beneficial, and I believe this is also the case when weight gain is a part of binge eating recovery.

Stopping the binge and purge cycle and learning to nourish your body may lead to an overall calorie increase for you. This can be the case if you binge infrequently, if binge on smaller quantities of food, and if you restrict severely between binges. Even if you know you want freedom from the binge and purge cycle, the thought of weight gain may make you worry and make you want to avoid making healthy changes.

So, how then do you alleviate fears of weight gain from binge eating recovery? How do you convince yourself to eat enough food every day? How do you avoid giving in to the temptation to restrict?

In the rest of this blog post, I’m going to give you 5 tips to help with these concerns:

Tip 1: Realize the Futility and Danger of Your Current Path

In my own personal recovery, I was in the majority. Stopping binge eating led to an overall decrease in calories and my body gradually went back down to its natural weight. So, when giving these tips, I want you to know that I’m speaking of a challenge that I did not personally go through. Nevertheless, I believe my personal experience shines an important light on this issue that I hope you will find helpful.

The reason I did not go through the challenge of weight gain in binge eating recovery was due to the time in my disorder that I recovered. I recovered after the binge eating had already brought me well over my natural weight. If I would have recovered in an earlier stage of my bulimia—when I was still underweight from restricting and anorexia, and before my binges had gotten very frequent and very large—then I would have indeed gained weight in recovery.

I look back and wish that I would have recovered at this earlier stage when I was still below my normal weight, both because it would have saved me valuable time that I wasted to bulimia, and it would have been safer and healthier than spiraling further into binge eating.

My binges got worse and worse over time, and the quantity of food I ate during binges increased; and I put on weight in an unhealthy and shame-producing way. Gaining weight by eating normally would have been so much less stressful and less painful, and I would have gained much less weight than I eventually gained by staying bulimic.

If you fear recovery because you are still under your natural weight due to harmful restrictive behaviors, you need to realize that this won’t last. You are on a dangerous path and it will only hurt you. It’s simply not sustainable to starve yourself or purge frequently to try to fend off weight gain from binge eating. It will only make the binge eating get worse and worse, and you will eventually gain weight—and likely more weight than if you learn to let go of those unhealthy behaviors now and accept natural, normal, and healthy weight gain.

*If you are severely restricting and/or underweight, it’s important to seek medical and nutritional help to gradually reintroduce a normal diet and restore weight.

Also know that the effect that restriction has on your metabolism adds to the futility of your current path. Starving yourself and purging slows your metabolism so that it will be increasingly more difficult and even impossible to maintain your current too-low weight. Thinking about what you are doing from a long-term perspective can help you realize that you can’t keep up these harmful behaviors forever. Restriction and purging cause too much stress, exhaustion, shame, and health problems.

Additionally, for all of the trouble and pain you are going through, your calorie intake (after factoring in the binges) is likely not much lower than what a normal diet would be. You may only be managing to eat a couple hundred calories less than you’d be eating if you stopped all of the dangerous behaviors. Wouldn’t it be easier to just eat and digest the small amount of extra food? Wouldn’t any weight gain that results be worth it, in order to be free of the painful daily struggle?

Tip 2: Weight is Not All about Calories. Be Patient.

If you are underweight or under your natural weight, then of course, you will need to gain weight, just as someone in anorexia recovery would. But, you are close to what you believe is your natural weight range, know that an increase in calories does not necessarily equal long-term weight gain. Recovery might involve some initial bloating and simply more food being in your system, which the number on the scale can temporarily reflect; but that doesn’t mean that extra weight is permanent.

As your body gets used to processing a normal amount of food, and you get any necessary help with digestive issues, you allow your metabolism to start working normally again. Calorie restriction makes the body more efficient at using calories, so that it gets the most out of every calorie you give it. This metabolism-suppressing effect can make you feel trapped into always eating less and less, which is impossible, and will lead to increased binge eating. (For more on this, listen to Episode 9: Avoid Restrictive Dieting to Stop Binge Eating).

Once you eat normally for a while and your body realizes that you are no longer starving, it can start to use calories for energy instead of storing them in preparation for the next “famine” (restrictive diet). This means that, even though you may be eating more overall, you won’t be gaining weight. This regulation of metabolism can take time, so patience is required. By feeding yourself adequately, you are giving yourself a gift that will last—a normal and healthy metabolism.

Tip 3: View Feeding Yourself in a Positive Light, Focus on Adding Foods that Benefit You

When you give yourself enough food, you are doing something good for yourself, and it’s helpful to keep this in mind. Think of all the nutrients you are putting into your body, and focus on adding foods that make you feel good. Of course, it’s fine to have all types of foods, even unhealthy ones; but if you are feeling hesitant about eating more, incorporating foods you feel really good about can help you feel less self-critical. It can take you from a mindset of thinking that you are overindulging (which you aren’t!) to a more positive mindset of knowing you are doing something very good for your body. This positive mindset will encourage you to keep going down the healthy path, and not slip back into restriction.

Another aspect of viewing normal eating in a positive light is to avoid thinking that you are overeating. If you are used to trying to maintain a daily restrictive diet of 1,200 calories, then initially, eating 2,200 or more on a daily basis may feel like it’s too much. Even though you likely binge on much more than that, your digestive system simply isn’t used to consistently getting that nourishing amount of food each day.

Know that this isn’t specific nutritional or medical advice, but if eating more food leaves you feeling overly full, you can try adding the extra calories as healthy fats and other healthy calorie-dense foods. Think of butter or coconut oil for example—there are a lot of calories packed into a small volume of food so that it doesn’t leave your stomach feeling too stretched during the time when you are increasing calories and regulating digestion. Adding healthy fat also has a positive effect on your metabolism’s ability to use calories for energy.

Tip 4: Think of How You’d Want to Feed Someone You Love.

If you are tempted to restrict, think of what you’d want someone you love to do in your situation. For example, if you imagine having a daughter who had this problem, would you want her to try to get by on the absolute minimum number of calories? Would you want her trying to starve herself while trying to stop binge eating, or at any time in her life?

Or… would you want to make absolutely sure she was getting enough nourishment? Would you want to make sure her body and brain got the message that binge eating was no longer needed? You can see that if you are thinking about someone you love, you want to make sure that person is well-fed; and you deserve the same kind and compassionate treatment.

Tip 5: Be Open to the Recovery Process and to Your Natural Weight

It is possible that—at this point—you aren’t even sure what your natural, healthy weight is. You may have dieted and binged for as long as you can remember and never allowed your body to find it’s normal set weight range. If this is the case for you, eating normally and stopping binge eating will be a leap of faith as far as weight is concerned. What can help in this situation is to know deeply that wherever you eventually end up weight-wise, it will be better than where you are now—trying desperately to control your weight and then feeling so out of control with the binges.

If you can allow your body to just be and gravitate toward it’s natural weight—whatever that may be—you will be free to live your life. Will you end up being the weight you want? There is no way to know. If maintaining the weight you desire is or has been a stressful struggle and required starvation, you need to listen to your body. An “ideal” weight that is impossible for you to maintain is not your natural, healthy weight and it just isn’t worth it. Trying to fight your natural weight is a losing battle, and if you are open to accepting your body’s unique size, the binge eating recovery process will be much easier on you.

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More help:

Free Inspiration Booklet – The booklet contains 31 daily messages to help you stay focused and motivated each day as you let go of binge eating.

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session with Kathryn Hansen. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

Group Coaching – Includes 4 group coaching calls per week with Kathryn. You’ll also get access to a forum for encouragement and accountability, and course access.

Brain over Binge Course – Self-paced online lessons (plus an app) for only $18.99/month. Includes over 125 tracks to listen to that give you the information and answers you need as you end binge eating.

Brain over Binge Books – Get Brain over Binge and the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide on Amazon and Audible.

Orthorexia and Binge Eating: Guest Post from Elisa Oras

by Kathryn Hansen

If you struggle with binge eating, you may also have obsessive thoughts about eating healthy. Extreme or excessive preoccupation with healthy eating that results in unhealthy consequences is called orthorexia.

Like other forms of restrictive dieting, orthorexia can lead to binge eating, and orthorexic tendencies can fuel the binge and purge cycle. Trying to eat well to nourish the body is a good thing, and I’ve addressed how you can approach this in my post, What is Healthy Eating? However, when healthy eating becomes a stressful obsession, it is no longer healthy for the mind and body.

I have a guest blog post to share with you today, from Elisa Oras, on the topic of orthorexia and binge eating. Elisa is the author of the new book, BrainwashED: Diet-Induced Eating Disorders. How You Got Sucked In and How to Recover. I asked her to talk about this because I do not have personal experience with orthorexia, and I think you will benefit from hearing her story. If your healthy eating has gotten out of hand and is harming your life, I hope you will find inspiration in this post from Elisa.

elisa

When Eating Healthy Becomes Unhealthy – by Elisa Oras

When I was 21 years old, I went through a very hard time in my life and developed depression that lasted for three years. With that, my health got worse. Suddenly, I had to deal with severe acne, hair falling out in chunks and a lot of terrible digestion issues.

I started to search the internet for solutions and found out that leaving out some foods from my diet could improve my health. The advice I received was to skip eating processed and junk foods and move towards a plant-based diet with an abundance of raw foods, and to start doing occasional water fasts and raw food cleanses.

Of course, now I see that all these health issues were mostly just the side-effects of the stress and depression I had, but then I did not see it that way and opted for a complete diet change instead.

I didn’t want to simply take drugs for my physical or mental health but wanted to heal naturally. I believed I was capable of healing my body and mind inside out if I just made an effort.

As you can see, I had good intentions. I wanted my body to be able to support its healing and not simply mask the symptoms by taking some drugs with serious side-effects. Eating more fruits and veggies and leaving out junk foods can definitely improve health, but at the same time, I didn’t know that healthy diet could be taken too far.

In 2011, I went to Australia with a work and holiday visa. I started to eat even more raw foods, and a few times, I went 30 days completely raw. I saw improvements in my skin, my energy levels, and my weight. I started a raw food blog and gained some following. There were people looking up to me who were inspired by my journey. I felt empowered and motivated to continue.

During that time, I also noticed it had become more difficult to digest some foods I had previously eaten, and I became very sensitive to a lot of stuff. I thought this was the proof that cooked food was indeed toxic to my body and I had to limit or avoid it even more. My ultimate goal was to be 100% raw for optimal health.

But my body did not seem to have the same goal as me. The more raw, clean and pure was my diet, the stronger food cravings I got. The healthy eating became more and more extreme as I was following the low-fat raw vegan diet. The “healthy” eating had to be free from salt, oils, very low fat, no grains or legumes, nothing artificial or man-made and of course, no processed or junk foods. Basically eating only raw fruits and veggies. I became more rigid and obsessed about foods than ever!

This “lifestyle” did not recommend restricting calories (which was good) so I was still eating above 2000 calories a day, often about 2500-3000 calories (and way more if you include the bingeing sessions). So I wasn’t simply dieting for weight loss at that point, but I just wanted to be healthy.

The more you let yourself be pulled into one specific way of eating, only interact with the people in the same boat, read the same books, websites, and recommendations, the more “right” it seems to you. You start to think that this is the only way to be healthy and happy and it is the sole answer to everything that is wrong in your life at the moment. Your mindset becomes brainwashed. You can’t even separate the fact from fiction or where to draw the line.

A rigid diet led to cravings and binges

I had to deal with constant cravings. I craved more fatty and salty foods, cooked food and even junk foods. The last one was particularly worrying for me because previously I had never been a big junk food eater. I wasn’t raised like that and never had such strong cravings for it. But the interesting thing is that the more I tried to eat super clean and pure, to eat only raw fruits and veggies, the more unhealthy junk food cravings I had.

As I was the raw food “inspiration” for many people or at least I thought I was, I felt very anxious and guilty to have those cravings. Like I was about to commit a serious crime. Like I was about to abandon my religion. I felt so conflicted. What I believed in my head and what my body craved did not match. I felt like I was living two separate lives where one was the good way to live and the other was bad.

Of course, the willpower only takes you so far and I could not resist my cravings for too long. I started to buy all the foods I craved and secretly binged on them. After I came out of my food coma I started eating healthy again and promised to never repeat this kind of bad and destructive behavior. I believed I just needed more willpower and more resistance. I still believed that if I only stayed raw long enough, my cravings would disappear and my taste buds would change.

A miserable cycle of orthorexia and binge eating

But every time I went back to my clean healthy eating I somehow ended up bingeing on the “unhealthy” foods I truly craved. Every time I binged, I promised myself that I would be back to 100% raw the next day. “This is the last time!” I would tell myself. But it never was because the harder I tried to restrict the foods I craved, the more I ended up bingeing.

Then one day I decided to do another 30-day raw food challenge. I had done them before but this time, I really believed I needed it to end all my junk food cravings and to be healthy once and for all!

I still had cravings on a daily basis this time, but I was able to stick with the challenge somehow. I did, however, have a never-ending craving for a burrito that sometimes kept me up all night.

After the 30-day challenge was over, I still had the burrito craving and decided to have one: “Just to get it out of my mind and get over it,” as I told myself. I thought this way my body will get what it wants, get over it, and I can just continue with my perfect raw food diet.

But that first bite turned into a two-month junk food binge and purge episode. I felt so sick, guilty and disgusting and I knew the purging to be the only way to “undo it” or to relieve some of the guilt and the uncomfortable sensation I felt with a stomach full of junk foods.

I felt miserable, stuck, and bloated. I felt like my own worst enemy. Someone who I had no control over. I had turned into this food smashing monster who was greedy and did not care about her own health. I didn’t understand why it was so difficult to eat the most nutritious foods on the planet, foods we are supposedly biologically designed for as taught in the raw food books.

To fight this binge-purge situation I was in, I decided to do a three-day water fast. I thought that maybe I just needed to clean my system and my taste buds, and then my body would naturally start to crave healthy foods again. I could start fresh. At this point, I was just so desperate to end this unhealthy bingeing and purging.

Before the first day of my water fast, I planned one “final” binge, promising myself that from tomorrow I will never eat junk again. I bought all of my usual binge foods, ate them all, felt disgusting and bloated, and then vomited. Now I was truly “motivated” to start over with my three-day water fast.

I fasted those three days and felt great afterward. I felt clean and pure, and I lost weight. When I decided to eat again, I first started with some raw juicy fruits. I knew that for the first days after a fast it is not good to eat overly much, but gradually increase the food volume. It was all good in theory, but in practice, it was somewhat different.

I felt my digestion working again and true hunger signals kick in. By the next day, I felt so ravenous that I went to the shop, bought all of my usual binge foods and binged again!

The cycle had just continued. My eating disorder was worse than ever. I purged till the blood vessels in both of my eyes broke, and I walked around with completely red, bloody eyes for about a month.

I was in shock. I was crying and felt the worst I ever felt. I realized I was totally out of control and lost.

After that, I gained weight. I usually NEVER gained too much weight because previously I did not do any calorie restriction. But after the three-day period of no food whatsoever, with reduced metabolism, with the binge and purge session that followed it, I gained about thirteen pounds. I was at my heaviest at that point, and I felt so uncomfortable.

After that, I started to eat cooked foods again without any will to be 100% raw anymore. I just realized it wouldn’t work.

However, my eating disorder was not cured, it was just the beginning. I continued with the high carb low fat vegan diet – the cooked food version. I was still eating a lot of raw foods but included cooked foods too. This was a little bit more sustainable, but I still could not stop the bingeing on junk foods or eating until I felt sick.

I was still trying to eat clean, and I still felt guilty about certain foods, but since I wasn’t doing any calorie restriction or fasting, I slowly lost the extra weight. It took me a whole year to lose that weight by not restricting calories. I also stopped purging for a good while that year, so that helped with normalizing my weight.

But my mentality was still eating disordered, I still wanted to eat as clean as possible – I was not recovered. I was still overeating for most meals. The bulimia came back later on because I did not understand that by restricting the foods I craved, I couldn’t recover. This continued until the start of my recovery in 2013.

Letting go of strict food rules to gain control of bulimia

In September 2013, I was still planning to eventually return to raw foods one day. This was simply what I believed to be the only answer for me. I did not see any other way. I was too focused on eating only healthy foods and limiting all unhealthy foods.

I remember planning to start another 30-day raw food challenge from October 1st. But as usual, this meant going on a “last and final binge” so I could start “fresh” from tomorrow. So I did it, and felt incredibly sick afterward and purged.

I remember crying and suddenly I started seeing how sick it was what I was doing. How stuck I really was. And based on my numerous attempts to be fully raw previously I KNEW this 30-day raw food challenge would just lead to another binge and purge. I had simply seen it happen so many times.

I started to wake up and see the vicious battle that I was in. For the first time, I started to realize that maybe the bingeing and purging was not the thing that had to be stopped. Maybe it was the RESTRICTION that had to be stopped first.

So, from that realization, instead of doing another 30-day raw food challenge, I started my recovery. From then on, I wrote in my diary (where I always wrote down my restriction goals) to “eat what I truly crave.” I was just so tired of fighting against my body at that point. I was willing to try a different approach.

Finding balance and freedom from orthorexia, binge eating, purging, and food obsessions

It was a process of one year during which I totally re-evaluated my food choices, learned about my body signals, how to not restrict and eat what I craved and returned back to intuitive eating. It was a process of trial and error to find out how to recover. But one year after my final binge and purge session I was fully recovered from my bulimia and orthorexia.

I do not believe that eating fruits and veggies and trying to improve one’s diet to be healthy directly causes eating disorders. But when your healthy eating makes you binge-prone, obsessed with foods, fearful of foods, causes you to have too much stress over foods and eating, it overrides the health benefits and replaces it with more damage to your health and well-being instead. We have to know where to draw the line because there is a point where eating healthy can become unhealthy.

Now I am completely recovered from my eating disorder. I am able to eat when hungry and stop when full. I eat what I want when I want and how much I want. I have clear skin, good digestion, normal healthy weight, and no more cravings or junk food binges. I lost the ability to overeat and do not have a “good or bad” foods mindset. My health and eating are way more balanced now by listening and trusting my body than when I tried to actively control everything.

Even now, I still sometimes look back at my journey and am so thankful and amazed how the body is able to recover and find balance again with food and eating, if only given the right tools and conditions to do so. By not fighting against it but working with it.

Find out more about Elisa:

www.followtheintuition.com

Is “Wanting to Binge” Holding You Back in Recovery?

by Kathryn Hansen

Today, I’m going to address an issue that may be causing you some confusion and stagnation in your recovery. The issue is a common inner conflict, which can be described like this:

Wanting to binge, while also knowing that you want to recover.

Any eating disorder recovery program or philosophy would agree that wanting to recover is necessary for lasting success. If you’ve sought out recovery resources like my blog, you can rest assured that you have enough desire for recovery to move you forward. If you didn’t want to recover, you’d be binge eating and purging without regret and without feeling the need to change. But the reality is, you are experiencing enough consequences in your health and your life to want to move beyond bulimia.

The problem is: you don’t feel that desire to recover all of the time, especially at times when you feel you want to binge. During those times, it can be tempting to give up altogether, or at least temporarily—to get what you think you want: a binge.

In this post, I’m going to explain why you sometimes feel like you want to binge (even though you know you want to recover) in a way that I hope will provide a fresh perspective. Then, I’ll explain how to get through those times without letting it derail your recovery efforts.

Two Types of Wanting

To understand your inner conflict, it’s important to understand that there is a big difference between feeling like you want something in the moment, and truly wanting that thing.

On a simple, basic level, we all have two different types of wanting:

1.) “Primal wanting.” Primal wanting comes from the more primitive part of our brains—from a region that’s often called the “reward system.” The reward system drives us to perform pleasurable activities, survival-based behavior, and encourages us to avoid pain—whether that’s emotional or physical pain. The reward system makes us “want” to perform our conditioned habits and makes us “not want” to do things that aren’t pleasurable or that we perceive might be painful in some way.

When the reward system is working properly, “primal wanting” isn’t usually a problem. It drives us toward natural and necessary behaviors, and stops us from getting hurt. However, this same reward system can be activated by destructive behaviors and habits that have been reinforced over time, especially habits that involve pleasurable substances like drugs and large amounts of binge food. In destructive habits and behaviors, primal wanting could also be called “false wanting,” because it tricks you into believing you want something that you really don’t want.

When it comes to bulimia, the reward system becomes conditioned to react as if binge eating is vital to your survival. When it is triggered, it gives you that strong feeling of wanting to binge. It’s only doing its job because it senses that you actually need to binge, but you know that you don’t. (*Note: If you are still dieting restrictively, you might need more food, but you don’t need to binge).

2.) “Cognitive/Rational Wanting” The second type of wanting is a less immediate “want.” Cognitive wanting arises from the more rational, uniquely human elements of your brain. Cognitive wanting often involves working toward a goal, or at least involves some waiting to get what you want. It’s not driven by the thought of immediate pleasure without regard for long term consequences. This type of wanting describes your desire for recovery. Even though you may not feel and see it all of the time, you—your true self—wants to life free of your eating disorder.

Knowing that there are two different types of wanting, driven by two different pathways in the brain, helps you make sense of your inner conflict. To sum it up: The primitive part of your brain is automatically, and often persuasively making you feel you want to binge—while your higher, rational brain truly wants recovery.
This explains why your urges to binge feel like such an intrusion—those urges get in the way of your goals, your real desires, and the person you know you can be. Knowing that the binge urges are just an expression of irrational, false wanting gives you a clearer picture of why you have this inner discord.

How to Disregard Primal/False Wanting
To start overcoming this inner conflict, it’s important to look at when you feel that you want to binge. Is it in the moments leading up to a binge? Or is it afterward and between binges when you are feeling connected to your true self and your desire to recover? In the vast majority of cases, you only temporarily want to binge prior to a binge; and afterward, you’ll realize that you, in fact, didn’t truly want to binge at all.
It’s easy to recognize that it was false wanting after a binge when you are experiencing the consequences—and it’s then that the desire to recover resurfaces. The good news is that you don’t need to binge to make your true desire to recover resurface. Your desire will resurface even if you don’t binge—once the urge passes.

The key is to be able to recognize false wanting prior to a binge, not just afterward. To do this, it can help to write down the thoughts and feelings make you feel you want to binge. Then, every time you start to hear all of those thoughts and feel all of that desire, you’ll recognize it for what it is: just the brain’s reward system doing it’s appointed task, and you’ll know it’s just a temporary state you can pass through.

You can learn to experience the false, primal wanting in a different way—with detachment. Detachment means that you aren’t actively bringing attention to what you are experiencing. Without the fuel of your attention, those feelings of desire will fade way, the urge will pass, and you’ll reconnect with your cognitive/rational desire for recovery. You’ll also be so happy that you didn’t let the primitive/false wanting derail you from what you truly want—a life free of an eating disorder.
The best news is that if you can pass through those feelings of false wanting over and over, the primitive brain learns—it is reconditioned, and it gradually stops producing the desire to binge.

*I focused on binge eating here, but know this same concept can apply to other eating disorder behaviors you sometimes feel like you “want” to do—like dieting and/or purging—which become conditioned habits as well and are often driven by false wanting.

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More help:

If you want extra guidance as you learn to develop a healthy relationship with exercise, food, and weight, here are some resources for additional support:

Group Coaching – Get help from coach Julie and support from others who are overcoming this habit. Includes a forum that is open 24/7, weekly group coaching calls, mindfulness resources, plus course access.

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private session with coach Julie. She will help you change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

How to Get Unstuck with Recovery: The Meta Chatter (Guest Post from Lydia Wente)

by Kathryn Hansen

Hi! My name is Lydia Wente. I was a Lifestyle coach that had coached hundreds of people to better health, but also had a terrible secret:

I would regularly feel like I had lost total control, my body hijacked, leading me to eat massive amounts of food, and only stopping once the pain became too unbearable. I felt totally insane. Once I was in my right mind again, I would panic and restrict my calories to do damage control. Then the cycle would start all over again.

For more of my story, you can watch this video:

This was my secret, terrifying struggle for years until I found Kathryn Hansen. After reading her book “Brain Over Binge,” I was done with binging almost immediately. Now, I coach clients all over the world on making these principles work for them.

Those of us using Kathryn’s principles seem to fall into 3 categories:

Those who just “get it”. They understand it. It clicks. They are done with binging pretty quickly.
Those who have more of an up and down journey. The principles may have worked for them, but they tend to struggle with relapses and discouragement.
Those who understand the principles, but only intellectually. They don’t see a change in their actual binging. They feel like there is something here for them, but something else needs to click before recovery can start happening.

I help those in camp #2 and #3 make adjustments so the principles click, and therefore stop binging.

Here is one snag that comes up repeatedly for my clients: they don’t quite understand the chatter.

When I say “chatter” I mean those messages from the lower brain. The survival brain. Kathryn called them “neurological junk” in her book, or the messages that surround those urges to binge.

Here is a little video about the difference between the “chatter” and your higher brain thoughts:

By the time you finish reading this post, I think you will have a bit more insight into the nature of the chatter.

You may already recognize that FIRST layer of chatter. For instance, a message like:
“You are alone, you should eat while you have the chance.”
The recognition of that chatter would be an awesome first step! Yay! That’s a great thing to practice, but one thing you may fail to do is KEEP GOING.

For instance, we may recognize that the chatter is saying “you are alone, you should eat while you have the chance”, but then you have a SECOND layer of chatter, which says:
“Yah, well so what? I recognize the chatter, but that’s really how I feel. So I am still going to binge.”
Sometimes we recognize the FIRST layer as chatter, but not the SECOND layer. IT’S ALL CHATTER!

Any thought that leads you to binge is still the chatter.

This second layer I call the META CHATTER.

Let’s talk about “meta.” Meta thought is a thought about a thought.

For instance, if you think:

“Wow, that dress does not look good on her”

You may have a meta thought:

“Why am I so judgmental of people?!”

Who exactly are you talking to in your head? Interesting huh?

But that’s how our mind works. We have thoughts about thoughts, meta thoughts.

We also have chatter about chatter. It’s called meta chatter.

So remember: the next time you recognize a chatter thought, keep going!

It might go something like this:

CHATTER: “I am alone. I should eat while I have the chance.”

(You probably recognize this as chatter but wait! There’s more!)

CHATTER: “Yah, well so what? I recognized the chatter, but that’s really how I feel. I am still going to binge.”

(And then it keeps going)

CHATTER: “This won’t work. Just give in, I will eventually crack anyway.”

The key is to keep recognizing that chatter so that the shift in your brain can happen. Many of my clients have realized that they have to recognize several layers of chatter before the urges to binge melt away.

So how far does the rabbit hole go? Are you just going to be recognizing chatter all day?

At first it may seem like you are constantly recognizing chatter, but realize: this is a SKILL you are PRACTICING. And with practice, you get better at recognizing the chatter.

Think of the first layer of chatter like a Russian Doll. See it in your mind. That first, biggest doll is like the first layer of chatter. You open it up, you recognize it as chatter, but LOOK there is some more chatter inside. Ok, so open that one up and LOOK there is another smaller chatter inside that one!

It’s kind of like a game. You may need to practice “unpacking” these layers of chatter at first.

But you know what eventually happens? After a while, you know what’s in that doll. You know there are layers of chatter, and you can start dismissing the whole doll. You can say “Oh, I know you chatter. I recognize you!” Which eventually lets you feel comfortable and confident in quickly setting aside the whole thing and get on with your day.

So, for those struggling with relapse or simply applying Brain Over Binge principles at all, REMEMBER: The next step in your recovery may be to go a little further.

Look past that first layer of chatter. Just like those dolls get smaller as you keep going, your urges to binge will too.

For your free eBook about “How To Stop Binge Eating: and be successful at everything else” go to www.LydiaWente.com.

Watch a free video series about these principles to end binging in your life, click HERE.

Learning How to Eat in Recovery

by Kathryn Hansen

A central theme of my new book is that only 2 goals are necessary for recovery:

1.) Learning to dismiss urges to binge and 2.) Learning to eat adequately

I share principles, recommendations, written exercises, and resources to help you accomplish those two goals in a way that works for you. One of the resources I recommend–primarily in the area of learning to eat adequately–is HealED and BulmiaHelp.org.

Co-founder of the program, Richard Kerr, wrote a guest post for my blog at the end of 2014 about a technique for overcoming binge urges, and I wanted to have him back to talk about ending food restriction and implementing normal eating habits. Instead of just writing another blog post, he was kind enough to offer a 30-minute webinar for me to share here.

This webinar video will be immensely helpful to anyone who feels they need more guidance in learning how to eat during and after recovery, especially those who are having trouble giving up dieting.

(You may notice this video is on a new “Brain over Binge” YouTube Channel. Stay tuned, I’ll be posting more videos over time.)

Update:
HealED, founded by Richard and Ali Kerr, offers one-on-one coaching which is compatible with the Brain over Binge approach. Since I am no longer offering private coaching, I recommend that you contact HealED if you want this form of support.

The Primal Brain’s Role in Normal Eating (and Binge Eating)

by Kathryn Hansen

I received a good question from someone struggling with binge eating regarding which part of the brain—the higher brain (rational) or the lower brain (primal, habitual, instinctual, and pleasure-seeking) is involved in normal eating. This is topic I address thoroughly in the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide but I want to answer it briefly here—and direct you to a few other posts and podcasts episodes where you can learn more—because this issue can be nuanced.

The more primitive part of the brain (that I call the lower brain) has a fundamental role in eating, and when it’s functioning properly, we should be able to trust it to regulate our appetite and steer us toward pretty good food choices—based on our taste preferences and physiological needs. However, when restrictive dieting and binge eating become involved, the primal brain becomes dysfunctional—driving you toward massive amounts of food, as if that’s imperative for survival. To overcome this, it’s necessary to use the rational higher brain to override the primal brain’s (temporarily) faulty programming.

When you recover and end the binge eating habit, you are not banishing the primal brain. You are instead returning it to its normal role in regulating hunger and fullness and the desire for pleasurable food. However, in today’s modern food environment, I don’t think we can rely completely on the primitive, lower brain to guide our eating (like some proponents of an intuitive eating approach suggest). There are so many unnatural and over-stimulating foods that our appetite regulation system and our lower brain’s reward system weren’t meant to deal with. That does not mean we are powerless against those foods, but it does mean we need our higher brain to override any excess or problematic cravings.

Eating is never a purely rational experience, nor should it be. But in today’s world, I don’t think eating can necessarily be a purely primal-brain-driven experience either.

To explore more about this topic, you can check out the following resources:

Episode 16: Eating Intuitively: Is it Right for You in Recovery From Binge Eating?

Is Intuitive Eating a Remedy for Binge Eating?

Indulging in Food: Getting over Overindulging

Overeating: Don’t Overdo Self-Control

Episode 47: What if I’m Overeating After I Stop Binge Eating?

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More resources for additional support:

Group Coaching – Get help from coach Julie and support from others who are overcoming this habit. Includes a forum that is open 24/7, group coaching calls, mindfulness resources, plus course access.

One-on-one Coaching – Book a 45-minute private and highly personalized session. You will learn to change your thinking, uncover what is holding you back, and get on a path to complete freedom from food issues.

Improve Self-Control and Stop Binge Eating Under Stress

by Kathryn Hansen

I received a request for a blog post about how to improve self-control and dismiss binge urges when you are under stress. Stress can deplete the self-control functions in your higher brain, especially if you have stressful responsibilities that seem to require heroic self-control—like caring for an aging parent, nursing a sick spouse, being with young children all day, a highly demanding career, or dealing with difficult co-workers. At the end of the day, or whenever you tend to binge, you may not feel like you have the energy left to say no when the binge urges arise.

It may seem like you automatically and mindlessly follow the urges, so that you begin to wonder if you actually have any self-control in the moments when you need to avoid a binge. The prefrontal cortex—the part of the higher brain that gives you the capacity to overcome habitual and instinctual drives form the more primitive part of your brain (the lower brain)—can become weaker in times of stress. This doesn’t mean you don’t have any self-control. You can work to improve self-control so that it’s available to you when you have urges, and you can learn to stop binge eating under stress.

In this post, I’m going to give you two suggestions to help, which I also included in the Brain over Binge Recovery Guide. The goal of both of these suggestions is to help give your higher brain the ability to do it’s job, so that you can use self-control when you need it to overcome urges to binge—even when you are feeling overwhelmed, overworked, or exhausted.

1. Use Basic Self-Care (not Self-Indulgence) to Improve Self-Control

Having demands on your life and your time, and having a strong desire or unavoidable need to help others, does not have to affect your ability to recover. However, if you are currently struggling to say no to urges, it could be that your higher brain/prefrontal cortex is drained of energy. Research shows that self-control is like a muscle and can get tired when we are under stress or under-nourished; so that in these situations, the brain is primed to let survival mechanisms and habits—good or bad—run the show. [1] This does not mean you have to get nine hours of sleep per night, take a vacation, or buy expensive vitamin supplements in order to avoid binges. It only means this:

If you are currently unable to dismiss the urges, make sure you are not sabotaging your higher brain by neglecting your most basic needs—a decent amount of sleep, a little relaxation, and adequate food intake.

Being tired, overwhelmed, and exhausted won’t be a problem for you (as it pertains to recovery) in the future when your new habit is to not binge. Even though you may not be at your best if you don’t sleep well or have worked a long, stressful week, binge eating won’t cross your mind. Since recovery, I’ve had long stretches of time where I got vastly insufficient sleep—mostly due to my four babies who were terrible sleepers. For many months at a time, I got about 2-4 non-continuous hours of sleep per night, and not once did binge eating cross my mind. There are times in life when self-sacrifice is necessary and something you gladly accept, and that won’t change just because you have a history of binge eating.

What I’m suggesting here is a focus on basic self-care as a short-term tool (of course, taking care of yourself is always a good idea), in order to help your higher brain during the time when dismissing urges is a new skill and therefore takes up more energy reserves in the higher brain. Once you get better at dismissing the urges, it won’t be as demanding on the higher brain, so even if you don’t sleep, or your kids or boss drive you absolutely crazy that day—you’ll still have the energy reserves to easily avoid binges under stress. Then your urges will gradually fade, and won’t come up even if you do choose to devote all of your time and energy to others, and even if circumstances temporarily prevent you from meeting your basic needs.

If you are going through a time in your life right now that you feel is depleting your self-control, my advice for you would be to analyze the situation and try to find areas of opportunity for sleep, rest, and nutritional improvements. Even if you can carve out an extra half-hour for sleep each night or a ten-minute nap during the day, and try to make sure you don’t skip meals—that will benefit your prefrontal cortex. Remind yourself what you are still capable of dismissing urges, no matter the situation or stress level, but forgive yourself if you don’t avoid binges every time. Be patient and congratulate yourself on the times you are successful and build from there. Try to find small moments of self-awareness in the midst of the difficulty of your life, and that will help you feel more centered and connected to your higher brain when urges arise. (This podcast episode may also help you: Episode 42: The Power of Mindfulness in Binge Eating Recovery).

2. Short Meditation Sessions to Boost Your Ability to Stop Binge Eating Under Stress

Another way to help you feel more grounded and able to use your higher brain is adding very short meditation sessions to your day. Even five minutes of meditation every day will give you increased self-control and self-awareness—important benefits for someone trying to quit a bad habit. There are many ways to meditate, so you can find something that works for you, and I’ve included a short description of a useful meditation technique below, which you can use as a starting point. I am not suggesting meditation as a form of relaxation or feeling better, although it can certainly serve that purpose as well. I am suggesting that you meditate as a form of strength training for the higher brain—so that it will be more resistant to stress-induced energy depletion.

Your goal during meditation will be notice when your mind wonders and bring it back to a focal point—the breath is an easy focal point, but you can also focus on something physical like the feeling of your feet or hands, or focus on a certain word or phrase that you repeat over and over. This act of drawing the mind back from distraction and habitual thought activates the higher brain. Something I wish I would have known when I was a binge eater is that you aren’t meditating “wrong” if your mind keeps wondering. When unwanted thoughts pop up, that’s your opportunity to put your higher brain to use, redirecting your focus, and therefore changing your brain.

You may have to refocus 100 times during a short meditation when you first start, but if you keep practicing, you will get better—both at meditating, and at awareness of automatic thoughts in general, which will carry over through the day. Meditation increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, and builds stronger connections in the area of the brain responsible for self-control, which will benefit you in times when your life is demanding. Research indicates that self-control and ability to focus increases after just three hours (not all at one time) of meditation, and one can see visible brain changes after eleven hours. [2] Just 5 minutes once or twice per day will add up quickly, and you may start experiencing positive benefits and increased awareness right away. I realize if you are busy or exhausted, taking 5 minutes to meditate is going to seem like a waste of time, but if you can get over that mental barrier and just do it, you will start to see the benefits.

If you need a little guidance getting started, try the following simple meditation, adapted from The Willpower Instinct, by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., an expert in the science of self-control. [3]

Sit still and stay still. You can choose to sit on a chair with your feet flat on the ground or you can sit on the floor with your legs crossed. During the meditation, try to resist any impulses to move (for example, see if you can ignore itches and urges to change your position). Sitting still is important because it teaches you not to follow your impulses automatically.
Turn your attention to your breath. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing. In your mind, say “inhale” when you breathe in, and “exhale” when you breathe out. Whenever you notice that your thoughts are wandering, bring your mind back to focusing on your breathing. This activates the prefrontal cortex and quiets the stress and craving centers of your brain.
Notice how it feels to breathe and how thoughts wander. After a few minutes, stop mentally reciting the words “inhale” and “exhale,” and focus only on the sensation of breathing. Your thoughts might wander a bit more without these words. When you notice that you are thinking about something else, just bring your attention back to breathing. If you find it very hard to focus, you can say “inhale” and “exhale” for few rounds. This part helps to train both self-awareness and self-control.

I hope that using these two simple suggestions will help you start to feel more in control and able to avoid binges. If you want even more help with binge eating recovery, you can check out my Course.

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[1] The Willpower Instinct, by Kelly McGonigal (pg. 57)

[2] The Willpower Instinct, by Kelly McGonigal (pg. 25)

[3] The Willpower Instinct, by Kelly McGonigal (pg. 25)

Eating on Plate – A Simple Awareness Tool

by Kathryn Hansen

I wrote this on my Instagram account (@brain_over_binge) a few days ago, and I thought I’d share it here as well, and add a little to the discussion.

I wrote about the benefits of taking a moment to put the food you are going to eat on a plate, especially highly palatable processed foods, sweets, or really any type of food you tend to eat too much of. This is a tip that most of you have probably heard before, but I think it’s worth mentioning and talking about because it’s a simple tool that you can use throughout your life to be a little more mindful of how you are eating (it’s not just for recovering binge eaters). There is no need to measure or count when you put food on a plate/bowl (this isn’t a “diet” tactic); just put whatever feels and looks reasonable and generally matches your hunger at the time.

Don’t be restrictive in dishing out your serving (ie: don’t put a measly 4 chips on a plate and tell yourself you absolutely can’t have any more than that); and don’t make eating on a plate a rule (ie: “I always have to put my food on a plate”). The goal is not to take away your freedom to eat how you want. There is nothing wrong with eating out of a bag or box sometimes, or eating straight from the leftover containers in the refrigerator; however, putting food on a plate is especially useful if you are just learning to normalize portions and get in touch with hunger and fullness signals.

Taking that small amount of extra time to serve what you are eating gives you a little mental space before the first bite, so that you can notice hunger signals and think about what amount of food you may require. During the meal/snack, eating from a plate allows you to get a visual of how much you’ve eaten and how much you have left, and how that much food feels in your body. If you feel like you’ve lost touch with hunger signals over time after years of binge eating, I truly believe you have to rely on your eyes (and rational brain) more than your body’s signals to determine normal portions. In that way, having that visual of how much you are eating is really important.

I’m not saying you have to sit there and eat slowly, not thinking about anything else but the food and your body’s signals. I’m not saying you can’t do anything else while you are eating, or that you have to chew every bite 214 times. I think those types of recommendations can end up feeling hindering, and lead to guilt when real life doesn’t afford time for sitting down and eating 100 percent mindfully. I’m only suggesting you cultivate some small moments of awareness surrounding your eating.

Putting food on a plate also gives you a better chance to choose a healthy stopping point for your meal or snack, because it puts time and space between your cravings and your ability to get more food quickly. Even if, after eating what you’ve put on your plate (let’s use chips as an example), you go back and get more; you haven’t failed. It’s not about never going back for more chips; it’s about having the space to make that choice a genuine one. If the bag is right there in arms reach, there sometimes isn’t enough time between the craving and action for awareness. Even if the first few times you try this, you do go back for a little more a few times, you are still cultivating mindfulness because you are allowing yourself time to feel your craving for longer before acting on it. Even if you don’t dismiss that craving, you will certainly notice it, whereas you might be operating on autopilot when eating straight from the bag.

It’s important to accept that the primitive brain will likely prompt you to get more highly palatable processed food (and even healthy food that’s delicious); and putting that type of food on a plate will not change that fact. If you are going to learn to eat normally, you are going to have to allow some cravings to just be, without doing anything about them, and see that they do go away on their own very naturally. Give yourself the time and space to feel those cravings, and you may start to view them as not so threatening or urgent anymore. You may still decide to go back for another serving sometimes, but that decision will start to feel more like a genuine choice and not an action that makes you feel out of control, and you may find yourself choosing that option less and less.

Just a word of caution: This can only be helpful if you are not depriving yourself of food. Caloric deprivation and mindfully dismissing cravings aren’t compatible.